blood sweat tear

[imeanforever]

He's moving her to a different court to see if it'll improve her attitude. She's allowed to fly. It's been a long, long time since she was allowed to -

She is only allowed to fly to her destination, not anywhere else. She notices that she is not where she should be, that she cannot progress to where she was told to go, and she careens out of control when her wings won't flap anymore, and she crashes.

---

with Miles (kappa)

with Minus (kappa)

Comments

[imeanforever]

"Yes. Possibly with days between the last two steps."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Right. I'll go see about that shuttle, then."

He goes and sees about the shuttle. Copper shows up to deliver it. It's definitely bigger than the lightflyer, but still smaller than the house.

"If you're short on interesting ways to pass the time while these gates settle, I could teach you to fly these vehicles," Silver mentions.

[imeanforever]

"Is it hard if one is unfamiliar with them?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"The lightflyer's the easier of the two. I don't honestly know how hard either one would be for someone as unfamiliar with them as you are."

[imeanforever]

"Well, I'll pay attention when you fly it. How big do you need the gate and how high up?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"I've been thinking about that..."

He has a suitable spot picked out for the gate, low enough and in an awkward enough location that no one will take their lightflyer through it by accident on their way to the house, high enough and flyable enough for the shuttle to navigate without mowing down any trees.

[imeanforever]

Promise outlines it in fairylights to confirm she has the right idea, then: gate. She flies up to throw a rock through it. "Instant settle," she calls down.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Convenient!"

To the shuttle they go, then. Silver manipulates assorted controls and causes it to fly through the ring of fairylights.

[imeanforever]

They are several miles above an expanse of color.

It's hard to make out the individual flowers, but nothing else is that bright. They cluster enough to be more than noise even at this distance, though; yellows and blues cascading down one hill and reds and purples pooling in the valley, pastels swirling into the distance, jewel tones blooming from trees and being carried on the wind over a sea of sunset blossoms, petals floating so thick on the river that winds through the landscape that it's a flowing band of white and pink and cyan and gold.

The shuttle is airtight, but it looks like if you cracked the hull it'd smell of nectar.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Wow," says Silver.

[imeanforever]

"This is the Flowerswarm. It's famous but I hadn't actually seen it before."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I might take holos to bring home," he says. "...But in the meantime: second gate?"

There are maps and pictures of the test destination.

[imeanforever]

"Not an instant settle," Promise diagnoses presently.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Can't have everything, I guess."

He does in fact take holos of their outrageously pretty surroundings.

[imeanforever]

"Can I turn the ship invisible?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"...you may, but if that makes it difficult to fly you might have to turn it visible again before we go anywhere."

[imeanforever]

"I just meant for the view and so we're less conspicuously in a weird mortal device to anyone looking."

She turns the ship invisible.

[thisvorlunatic]

"The view is... certainly something. It reminds me of - a planet with a galactic reputation for refined aesthetics."

[imeanforever]

"Nobody grew the Flowerswarm, as far as I know - or at least nobody's maintaining it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"It's very pretty."

[imeanforever]

"Yeah. There's more pretty places I know about, I can put other pairs there."

[thisvorlunatic]

"That would be nice. I'm also wondering if it's possible to go a hundred times this high and set up a station with air onboard - if all the paired gates go through areas of thin atmosphere, then it seems like it would be uncomfortable to pass through them, and it's worth thinking about that sort of thing if you plan on selling lots and lots of gates. The obvious downside of course is that you'd need people to maintain the station, and I have no idea how easy it is to actually keep a station afloat above an infinite plane of ground... I suppose going a very long distance down from the surface is also an option. Do you know what's underneath Fairyland, if anything?"

[imeanforever]

"If you put something that can't fly very high up it will... fall, I imagine. And I'm putting the gates right next to each other. Under the ground is more ground."

[thisvorlunatic]

"We can test the discomfort thing, I suppose. ...If it's, er, ground all the way down, I'm now wondering what would happen if you opened a gate to a hundred light-years below the surface, or something like that. What if anything does happen when one end of a gate opens into the middle of a solid object?"

[imeanforever]

"Well, you can't go through it because there's solid object on the other side."